The loss of metallic products such as silverware is becoming a major economic problem in a wide variety of industries. The loss of kitchen utensils in garbage and linen has been calculated as being as high as the cost of an additional employee for food operations. In days of inflation, improper cost control can severely impact upon the likelihood of success of such an organization.
The prevention of such a loss, however, is not economically justified by the addition of another employee to the working force, since that additional cost must still be passed on to the consumer. Furthermore, candidates for the task of sorting through refuse for the purpose of saving a knife or fork are not highly motivated, and the skill applied to the task is often times not satisfactory.
In point of fact, those employees assigned the task of removing the refuse and linen from kitchens and other sources of non-metallic material are most often the lowest paid workers with the least amount of professional pride. Economics force such a result, even though the results are not highly economic.
Similar problems exist in other industries where valuable metallic items become intermingled with less valuable non-metals. For example, expensive surgical instruments are misplaced among operating room linen even though the professional skill of those workers is great. Laundry companies have been known to fail to return valuable clamps, forcepts and scalpels either for failure to clearly identify the proper customer or as compensation for damage or inconvenience incurred in finding the metal goods.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a device which can be operated by anyone and which is easily capable of identifying the presence of metallic objects in a quantity of non-metal.
A second object of the invention is to provide a device which more effectively utilizes the labor required to remove non-metallic refuse or other goods.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide a safe, effortless and efficient device for separating metals from non-metals including means permitting ease of movement of the container from work areas to disposable areas.
Other objects will appear hereinafter.